


do anything rather than marry without affection

by middlemarch



Category: Bridgerton (TV), Bridgerton Series - Julia Quinn
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Female Friendship, Male Friendship, Marriage of Convenience, Regency Romance, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-09
Updated: 2021-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-15 12:27:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,392
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29933400
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch
Summary: Simon was used to be underestimated. He wasn't used to making that error.
Relationships: Daphne Bridgerton/Friedrich Wilhelm Ludwig von Preußen (1794-1863) | Prince Frederick of Prussia, Eloise Bridgerton & Penelope Featherington, Simon Basset & Will Mondrich, Simon Basset/Eloise Bridgerton
Comments: 24
Kudos: 54





	1. Chapter 1

“Let me see if I understand you correctly, your Grace—”

“Will, you needn’t stand on ceremony. Not with me, not at this time of night and especially not while I’m nursing a sore jaw from that bloody left hook of yours,” Simon said, shifting the aforementioned jaw gingerly, almost enjoying the ache. Definitely enjoying the scent of the coffee, the doubled warmth the liberal dose of brandy Will added had brought to the drink.

“Fine, Simon. You’re telling me your problem is you think you’re in love with your wife?” Will said. 

“Falling in love,” Simon clarified. “But otherwise, yes.”

“I don’t know any commoners who’d be much troubled-- perhaps it’s different for Dukes and Duchesses? Why is it a problem you’re falling in love with your wife?”

“Because that’s not what Eloise wants,” Simon said, staring into the depths of the rude crockery mug, wishing it held only brandy. The promise, however brief, of forgetting the vows he’d made, the expectations he’d had, the startlingly serene blue of Eloise’s eyes that first night he’d actually looked at her in the Abernathy’s library while the orchestra played another waltz for the dancers. Last night, when he’d rested the palm of his hand at the small of her back as she walked from the dining room, the startled look in her blue eyes at his touch.

“It was supposed to be a marriage of convenience, Will. To make the mammas of the Ton let me be, to allow Eloise her intellectual pursuits, to permit us both our independence without any concern about impugned honor,” Simon explained. It had been decided in a few minutes, after Simon found Eloise in the library, reading Erasmus as avidly as any rake read pornography, clapping the book closed just as quickly; her sister, the proper, beautiful Daphne, declared incomparable of the Season by the Queen herself, had been whirling about the ballroom with this suitor and that, Lords and Viscounts and the Marquess of Quain. Eloise had been hiding and if Simon hadn’t been sure of it, she’d admitted it before he could even say a word.

*

“I’m hiding, it’s horrible, I know, but I’m not made for this,” she’d said. She wore a silvery dress trimmed with blossoms and there was a loose chestnut curl against her cheek, far more appealing than the narrow diamond tiara she wore. Before he could answer her, she spoke again.

“All I want is to read and study, to do what every mamma wishes her son would do at Oxford or Cambridge and all that happens is japes and pranks, what a waste! I hardly think Anthony read a word and Benedict wasn’t much better and this is my only chance, my only university—the libraries I sneak into during the balls Daphne spends collecting proposals. To think that’s all ahead of me, God, all that’s ahead of me—it’s grotesque! Anathema!”

There had been such a light in her eyes, such an edge in her low, husky voice, such, such… rage. Such indignation and longing and hopelessness. Simon had never met anyone who spoke freely the words his own soul quailed at whispering. He thought of the women who’d watch him when he walked into the glittering, candle-lit ballroom reeking of freesia and lilies, the mothers who just kept themselves from licking their lips, their daughters and their eager, conquering eyes, their unbitten lips. Eloise was biting her lip and that dark curl was still loose against her cheek and her hand was still very gentle holding the volume of Erasmus.

“You could marry me,” he’d offered. He might have been speaking Attic Greek, except that he had a fair suspicion she would have understood that more readily. “I need a wife who will not mind being left alone to her own devices, who will not expect an endless social whirl and a half-dozen curly-haired children. You need the wealth and power that would allow a Duchess to study whatever she wanted, to be as eccentric as she likes. It is a solution.”

There had been a long pause while she considered. He hadn’t known her well enough to read the answer in her raised eyebrow.

“It’s quite a neat solution at that. But if I am to respond, I ought to know your name, properly, that is.”

“Simon Basset, Duke of Hastings.”

“I’m Eloise Bridgerton, your Grace. Your betrothed.”

He’d obtained a special license but they’d waited a week for her sister to accept the proposal from the Queen’s nephew; once those wedding preparations were underway, there was little enough attention left for the subdued nuptials of the Duke of Hastings.

*

“We were meant to be polite acquaintances. At most, amiable but disinterested in each other, perfectly content as two solitary beings,” Simon said. He had not felt a lightning bolt strike when he stood waiting for her at the altar, nor had the sight of her veil or her bright eyes stirred him. The church had been next to empty, Will and his wife, Lady Danforth, Penelope Featherington and Eloise’s family making up the whole of the congregation; it was very likely Miss Penelope’s eyes had shone more in seeing her friend’s approach than had her groom’s.

“But you are not disinterested now,” Will said. “How did it happen?”

“I’m not sure anyone had ever listened to Eloise before,” Simon said. “Possibly her friend Penelope, but I’m not certain. We sat down to dinner, Eloise and I, and I asked a question. She answered. She was not dull and she was not trying to please me or enchant me. To flatter me. It was…unusual. I liked it. I asked another question and she told me it wasn’t worth answering and what I should have asked was something else entirely. She asked that question and answered it and then she asked me if I had anything beyond a schoolboy’s opinion on Coleridge and I found I did. Before I could say much more though, she interrupted and asked me about my opinion of Carthage and then the Seven Bridges of Königsberg problem.”

“It was more than the novelty,” Will said, nodding before Simon had agreed.

“She made no demands on me when we were apart and she was far more elegant and graceful a Duchess than I’d anticipated. But if we sat down to a meal, to tea—if I stood beside her at a ball, handed her a cup of punch or an ice, I was sure of a real conversation. I’d never known a woman could be equally patient and demanding, when it had nothing to do with a compliment. And she’s so observant—I’ve never been served a dish I didn’t finish the first time, there’s not a rose in the townhouse and all the linen is scented with rosemary, not lavender. I began to seek her out. I began to look at her face when she spoke, how lovely she was and how little she cared for it. When we danced at a ball, she was eager to be done with it. I only wanted to hold her a little longer—my own wife, Will.”

“You could seduce her. She’s naïve and you’re not,” Will said. It wasn’t a suggestion.

“I don’t want that,” Simon said, unable to keep from imagining it, Eloise flushed in his arms, her hands reaching for him, her alto voice even lower, moaning his name _Simon, Simon_ as he loosened her hair, her stays, the ribbons of her garters. As she discovered a world she’d never studied, the way her eyes would darken as she determined to become an expert. _Simon_ , murmured in his ear, his name an endearment that preceded the most filthy Latin and Greek poetry. The curve of her thigh like a lyre, the scent of their lovemaking like manna and myrrh. He could fool her, but only for a little while, and then she’d know what he’d done and why. There’d be no coming back from it.

“She’ll either love you or she won’t. How you feel about her won’t make a difference. How she feels about you needn’t make a difference to you,” Will said. 

“I know,” Simon said.

“But you wanted me to tell you. You wanted me to knock some sense into you and make your teeth rattle in your jaw. So I’m telling you,” Will said, drinking down the last of his coffee. “Go home to your Duchess, your Grace. Find something neither of you knows anything about and study it. Your German’s always been piss-poor at best.”

“You think that will work?” Simon asked. Eloise would say yes, he was fairly certain of that, and she had Latin and Greek and French but there was a decent chance she wasn’t fluent in German and he could envision her face if he proposed the endeavor, her lips curving in a smile another woman would have given for a ruby parure. He’d given her the Hastings ruby parure and she’d barely managed the briefest glance of admiration. The star sapphires, which suited her better, hadn’t prompted anything more.

“If it doesn’t, at least you’ll be able to curse in German,” Will grinned.


	2. Chapter 2

“Eloise, you’re talking in circles. And you know I’ve not your same background in Euclidean geometry, it’s not fair to either of us for you to go on this way,” Penelope said, pushing a dish of sweets across the table. Somehow, out of season, she had Eloise’s favorite sugarplums and Eloise would have reached for one except the dratted sunlight would be sure to catch on the facets of her ring, as if the whole world was intent on teaching her a lesson she’d been too stupid to see.

“You’re telling me to just speak plainly, are you?” She was sitting down otherwise she would have stamped her slippered foot.

“You’ll feel better. You know you will. And then you can eat the sugarplum,” Penelope said.

“I’ve made the most terrible muddle of it, Penelope. Far worse than you can imagine.” Just this morning, she’d woken from the most shocking dream; now, there was not even the promise of sleep to give her any respite.

“So, if I cannot imagine it, you’ll just have to explain. You like explaining,” Penelope said. 

“It’s Simon. The Duke. My husband,” Eloise said.

“I know who you mean, dearest El.”

“This wasn’t supposed to happen,” Eloise said. “It’s a travesty.”

“Is it worse than the burning of the Library of Alexandria? Because that’s what you usually use as a point of reference,” Penelope said. She was a good friend and she richly deserved the bit of shortbread she’d begun to nibble.

“It is. And it isn’t. But it’s close,” Eloise said. She had no one to blame but herself, truly, unless she decided to hunt down a plump cherub with an arrow and risk Psyche’s fate. 

“It’s all right, Eloise. It cannot be as horrid as you think.”

“I’m falling in love with Simon. My husband. The Duke of Hastings,” Eloise said as if she were finishing a perfectly solved proof. It was similarly incontrovertible and it made her want to tear out her hair, something she could get away with now that she was the rich and well-connected and eccentric Duchess of Hastings. He’d given that to her, as he’d promised, but it wasn’t the reason her heart beat faster when she saw him.

“Yes, dearest, I know who he is and what he is to you. I have done for some time. But you haven’t, have you?” Penelope asked.

“No. I’m a fool,” Eloise said bitterly. It wouldn’t matter how sweet the plum was, how finely sugared. Nothing could take away the taste of the truth.

“You’re the Duchess of Hastings and you’re falling in love with your husband, who was the object of every living woman’s desire in the British Isles for years before you wed, though I’m sure you love him for some reason no other lady has. It’s all right, Eloise,” Penelope said.

“It’s not,” Eloise retorted. She sounded weak even to herself.

“It could be, if you’d get out of your own way for once—you’ll notice I don’t say to take your nose out of a book. And if the Duke keeps his wits about him,” Penelope said. “He’s not secretly an imbecile, is he? I can’t see how you’d fall in love with a dullard.”

“No, he’s not an imbecile. That’s what—that’s why—and he looks at me, Pen, he looks and looks and then he says something brilliant, sometimes in Latin, and I want—”

“Yes?”

“I want Simon,” Eloise said. “God help me, but I do.” It hadn’t occurred to her as even the remotest possibility upon their first meeting, which had been her first mistake.

*

“I don’t want any of this,” she’d said, her gloved hand gesturing towards the ballroom where the lit tapers flooded the dancers in gold, where the scent was of hot-house forced freesias and lilies. The Abernathy’s library was wonderfully brown, umber and sepia, the leather of the bound volumes, the walnut furniture, the dark draperies blocking out the starlight. Eloise wanted to sink down into it and never emerge but someone would come looking for her. Had, since there was a tall man in a perfectly tailored frock-coat giving her a most bemused look. Bemusement was better than bafflement, dismay or disgust, all of which were familiar expressions on various Bridgertons. “I’m not made for this, I’m hiding—horrible, I know, but the truth often it, isn’t it?”

“I can’t claim any authority over the truth,” he’d said and she’d liked that. His willingness to refrain from domination. It was rare, in her experience, which while not wide, was likely representative of her social class. She and Pen had argued for a whole afternoon about the applicability of their assessment and decided it.

“All I want is to read and study, to do what every mamma wishes her son would do at Oxford or Cambridge and all that happens is japes and pranks, what a waste! I hardly think my brothers did any better and this, this is my only chance, my only university—the libraries I sneak into during the balls Daphne spends collecting proposals. Daphne’s twice as intelligent as any man she dances with but she’d never dare show it. To think that’s all ahead of me, God, all that’s ahead of me—it’s grotesque! Anathema!”

He’d let her speak, rant really, without an interruption. He stood quite straight but there was a grace about him that was unmistakable and a certain attention she’d encountered infrequently. It was too bad she’d never speak to him after this, for what gentleman would accept as an acquaintance a woman such as herself?

“You could marry me,” he said. Eloise conquered the urge to exclaim, something sure to be incomprehensible, and instead decided to take him at his word. She might have said something, but he went on. “I need a wife who will not mind being left alone to her own devices, who will not expect an endless social whirl and a nursery full of children. You need the wealth and power that would allow a Duchess to study whatever she wanted, to be as eccentric as she likes. It is a solution.”

“It’s quite a neat solution at that. But if I am to respond, I ought to know your name, properly, that is,” she said.

“Simon Basset, Duke of Hastings.”

“I’d be a Duchess?” Eloise asked. “I shouldn’t agree to anything without establishing my independence—I won’t be chattel and I won’t be beholden to any man’s morals, not when I’ve no way to know if they’re half as good as my own or twice as bad, your Grace.”

“Shall you draw the document up yourself or ask your solicitor? I doubt you’d trust my man,” he said, without an ounce of offense in his tone and was that actual respect in his dark gaze?

“You’d accept that?” she said.

“Yes. And would you?” he asked, suddenly sounding young and unsure.

“I’m Eloise Bridgerton, your Grace. Your betrothed.”

*

“You had not the least suspicion something like this might happen?” Penelope asked. “I thought, at your wedding, there was a look in your eyes—”

“Mamma insisted on those roses and you know they make me sneeze, I don’t care how romantic they are thought to be,” Eloise said. “Simon cannot abide them either, I’ve done away with them at Cliveden and the house in Town.”

“All right. How did it transpire that the Duke has taken priority in your affections over all things erudite, my dear Saint Scholastica?” Penelope said.

“I didn’t say that, Pen!” Eloise huffed. “I haven’t entirely lost all claim to rational thought. But I’d only expected us to be civil acquaintances, amicable enough, but without any real interest in each other, and yet when I speak, he listens, quite intently. He asks the most intelligent, engrossing questions or offers insights without any pretension or condescension. It’s quite remarkable in a man, any man, but I’d never expected it of a Duke.”

“Has there been the least hint of flirtation between you?”

“You know I cannot flutter my lashes at him over a discussion of Euler. The time has passed for dropping my hankie or swooning—he’d probably call for a footman to catch me and bundle me off to bed with beef tea and a hot water bottle for good measure,” Eloise said.

“He’s that considerate?”

“More than I could ever be. And gentle. Thoughtful, especially when we visit my family. He’s most devilishly amusing when we are in the carriage returning home, he’s a marvelous mimic and he has Benedict to a tee, Pen, really.”

“He sounds like a boon companion,” Penelope said. “A great friend.”

“If only that was all he is,” Eloise said. “If only the sound of his voice didn’t make me blush. He touched my hand when he gave me a book he’d gotten down from the highest shelf in the library and I trembled, Pen. I cannot even long for him properly, for how embarrassing is it for a wife to yearn for her own husband or a Duchess for her Duke?”

“Why stop at longing?” Penelope said, as practically as if she’d suggested retrimming a bonnet. 

“I don’t understand—”

“For someone who sets such a store on brains, you don’t seem to use yours very effectively. I wouldn’t have thought love would make you so stupid, El,” Penelope said. “You needn’t be literally madly in love with him. You might be quite reasonably in love and let him know, by degrees.”

“By degrees?”

“I don’t believe he is indifferent to you. Nor that he looks upon you as only a friend. But friendship makes a fair beginning for love, if you’ll give it some encouragement,” Penelope said.

“You are telling me to court him? My own husband?” Eloise said.

“It is hardly the most radical notion for an ardent devotee of Miss Wollstonecraft. What can it hurt to invite him to take tea with you in your own sitting room or to accompany you to a concert or scientific talk you are most interested in? To straighten his neck-cloth or brush a thread from his admirably broad shoulder? No pretense is required, only those wifely attentions anyone would expect in any arrangement other than yours—you only have to let him see a little of how you feel when he looks in your face,” Penelope said. “And perhaps forget your spenser now and then and see if he offers you his coat or his arm should you shiver.”

“I’ll make a fool of myself, I know it,” Eloise said.

“You already feel a fool. And there are worse things than folly. Dishonesty. Loneliness. Despair.”

“Humiliation, if Lady Whistledown decides I’m grist for her mill,” Eloise said, already imagining resting her gloved hand on Simon’s a few seconds longer than would be expected getting in and out of their carriage, the way his expression might change if she held his gaze as she sipped from her tea-cup or found any opportunity to ask him which translation of Catullus he preferred.

“I shouldn’t worry about her,” Penelope said serenely. “She owes you a favor, does she not?”

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from Jane Austen.
> 
> The Seven Bridges of Königsberg is a historically notable problem in mathematics. Its negative resolution by Leonhard Euler in 1736 laid the foundations of graph theory and prefigured the idea of topology.
> 
> The city of Königsberg in Prussia (now Kaliningrad, Russia) was set on both sides of the Pregel River, and included two large islands—Kneiphof and Lomse—which were connected to each other, or to the two mainland portions of the city, by seven bridges. The problem was to devise a walk through the city that would cross each of those bridges once and only once.
> 
> By way of specifying the logical task unambiguously, solutions involving either reaching an island or mainland bank other than via one of the bridges, or accessing any bridge without crossing to its other end are explicitly unacceptable. Euler proved that the problem has no solution. The difficulty he faced was the development of a suitable technique of analysis, and of subsequent tests that established this assertion with mathematical rigor.


End file.
